[MUSIC] Nurture marketing is one of the most powerful social marketing strategies because of its ability to take an individual from prospect to customer in a one to one relationship. To tell us about it I wanna welcome Ellen Valentine of Silverpop, an IBM company, and part of the IBM marketing cloud. Ellen, welcome. >> Hey Randy, I'm so excited to be here with you today. Thanks for having me. >> Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, and about Silver Pop, an IBM company? >> Happy to do so. My name is Ellen Valentine. I'm a strategic marketing evangelist with Silver Pop, which is an IBM company. And in that role, I travel all over the world speaking about best practices, and trends, and things I'm seeing out there in the industry. I also spend a lot of time coaching and mentoring clients to really step it up. Marketing's changing, digital marketing in particular, and there's a lot of things that everybody can do to improve. And I also write a lot of content. So part of IBM commerce and the new IBM marketing cloud we're all very excited about that. It's a comprehensive digital marketing tool kit for marketers. It's a digital marketing platform to allow them to do nurture marketing. And really support all marketing throughout the customer journey. Silverpop, an IBM company, is a technology provider, software solution provider, cloud-based digital marketing platform. Think of us as having a digital marketing took kit, very comprehensive, lots of capabilities. To bring to bear for companies of all industries and all sizes to help support all their digital marketing initiatives. >> Fantastic and you guys are great at what is called nurture marketing. So could you explain what is nurture marketing. >> Well, nurture marketing is a very, very powerful digital marketing technique that companies use to market to people that are not yet ready to buy. They're maybe in your database but they're just not ready to make a selection and make a purchase. So I wanna basically take care of you and let you know what your options are and let you know what the possibilities are until you're ready to purchase. So it's a relationship building, digital marketing exercise. A great example is all of us have cars. And probably about 9 to 12 months before we're ready to make a change. We start researching. We start talking to our friends, our social networks. We start, maybe, even going down to the dealership to figure out, what kind of car do I want for my next car? Well, when I'm in that phase, that's called nurture marketing. >> Okay, so as I'm going through what we call the customer journey or the product purchase lifecycle, we're going though step by step through different sorts of activity using different media. Maybe even going to a dealership, to figure out where we're going, and basically nurture marketing helps me to move along that journey, is that right? >> Exactly, exactly. If I'm a company that has cars that I want to sell to you, then I want to take care of that relationship and while you're in that decision process. >> Is it different though for different types of cars like sports cars versus SUVs? >> Absolutely, we all have different kinds of cars we like to drive. In marketing speak, we might like to say there's different personas, or different buyer personas. And we wanna market to those different personas uniquely. We even wanna get down to marketing to each person as an individual. So we wanna understand, do you have car seat needs? How many people do you wanna put in your car? What kind of driving do you like to do? All those things get taken into consideration. As a car manufacturer, as a person marketing cars, I take all of that into consideration so that I can personalize all of my engagement with you and recommend the best solution for you and hopefully win your business. >> So let me make sure I understand. So if I have somebody that I know is triggering to begin to buy a car, I learn what kind of car they want. I can put that into a database, and then if I have content out there that takes them through their customer journey then the challenge, or what the Silverpop system does, is to get the right piece of content to the right person as they're moving through the journey. >> And it also gets the right content to you at the right time. But it also gets it to you in the right format. Are you engaging with the content on smartphones? Are you using iPads in the evenings? Are you on a desktop device? How are you actually engaging with me. Cuz I wanna meet you where you are and give you what we would call a multi-channel journey. >> I really like that idea. And so what you're really doing is you're actually watching me in real time as I'm engaging with you and the social sites and other sorts of things that I'm doing as I'm looking for my car. And then your system, Silverpop, figures out the best way to engage with me with the right media and the right message to move me through. Is that correct? >> That's absolutely correct. The IBM marketing cloud. Silverpop is part of the IBM marketing cloud. The IBM marketing cloud is actually collecting those behaviors in real time. Storing those in the digital marketing database, and then using that data, using those things that we've stored. And marrying that with rule-based automated communication. So, it's using the data, using the content that you've got out there and actually delivering that to you. Based on rules that are established on what's the right piece of content to communicate. At which point in the customer journey. >> So basically if I understand that using our car analogy, when I get to where I'm comparing different makes of cars. You pick that up in the automated system and say, if he's beginning to look at comparison, wait five days and then send him this ebook or this video. On how to compare cars. >> That's exactly right. We'd like to think that you have a content framework to support this customer journey. In that content framework at the very top, you're going to have content that's generating awareness for your brand. And your vehicles, the middle of the content journey is, what are all the different possibilities that you could explore? The bottom, once you've indicated what your preferences are, then I'm gonna tell you why you wanna do business with my brand, and with my company. So, it's all about having helpful content at every step in that customer journey. And really meeting them when they're ready for that step. And offering unique personalization, unique timing, and then unique formats for that content so it's as helpful and relevant as possible. So what you're really doing, is your taking us out of mass marketing and sending out lots of emails and things. To saying let's watch what they're doing, and on an individual basis, let's figure out the best content and the best media to get the right message to that person as they're moving through the journey. It's really one-to-one, real-time marketing. Is that correct? >> That's right, instead of being like a cheerleader with a megaphone, shouting out the next thing or blasting out the next piece, where everyone gets the same message on schedule, the same Tuesday at 12 o’clock. This way, because of rule-based communication, you're actually getting very personalized messages. And I almost think it's like shifting from being a cheerleader to being a concierge. Where you're actually providing helpful information when needed and in the format needed so that I'm gonna have the best experience possible. >> I wanna thank you for taking us through this overview of nurture marketing and real-time marketing. And in our next video you're gonna show us some best case studies on how nurture marketing can really benefit a company. Thank you, Ellen. >> Hey, Randy, thanks a lot. I've really enjoyed being here. [MUSIC]
